The Punishment of the Traitor

Like Dreyfus, Charles Benjamin Ullmo (1882–1957), a promising naval officer, was accused of espionage and sentenced to life on Devil’s Island. Unlike Dreyfus, Ullmo was—emphatically guilty. He was arrested trying to extort money from the French Naval Ministry by threatening to sell intelligence to an enemy power should his demands not be met. He desperately needed money to maintain both his opium habit and his beautiful and demanding lover, Marie Louise Welsch, known as La Belle Lison. Many saw him as a weak-willed, immature individual seduced and manipulated by the evil Welsch. Prostitution and paid mistresses were widely considered a fact of life, but many took issue with Welsch’s perceived lack of modesty and discretion. Sympathy with Ullmo waned when it turned out that he had previously been in touch with the German embassy, and he was convicted of treason. While antisemitism played a central role in the Dreyfus Affair, its impact on Ullmo’s case was rather limited—to the intense frustration of antisemitic campaigners. Ullmo’s public degradation in Toulon (located between Marseilles and Nice on the C.te d’Azur) on 12 June 1908 was described by one journalist as “the most joyous of southern French festivals and the most poignant of spectacles”.

The papers suggested that somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 spectators, including many women who seemed particularly keen, attended. Ullmo was pardoned in 1933 and returned to France the following year but was so disgusted with what he considered the moral decay of the modern world that he promptly returned to French Guyana for the rest of his life.

The Punishment of the Traitor. Ullmo Sentenced to Life Imprisonment and Military Degradation. Le Petit Journal. Supplement Illustr., 8 March 1908 (original size: 29.5 x 43 cm).

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